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PayPal Freezes Cryptome's Account
grimwell sends in the news that after Cryptome's little run-in with Microsoft and NetSol, the activist site has now had its funds frozen by PayPal. Cryptome founder John Young notes, "Google lists thousands of instances of this asymmetrical high-handedness." "We have reviewed your PayPal Account, and due to the excessive risk involved, we would like to begin parting ways in a manner that is least disruptive to your business."
I'd give anything to get a letter from PayPal like that. For us mere mortals, it takes about 30 click-throughs to close an account. PayPal is the Worst Thing In The World.
-- "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush, 29 September 2000
If this were a federally-regulated bank they would not be able to do this.
I for one support PayPal's decision, not because I don't like Cryptome, but because they are a private business making a decision that the feel suits them best.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Why you need to support, or even express your support?
True any private business can screw over its consumer, but why support this decission? Unless you are affilied with paypal there is no purpose. If you are, you should have declare it.
PayPal, being a business, also has the right to refuse any business they want.
Freezing funds gets screwy, though.
I have no affiliation with PayPal.
I should have been clearer. I support their right to make this decision, and, if they were a federally regulated bank, they could have done the exact same thing. Read the info on Cryptome's site.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I support your stance for being radical (in this environment) and honestly idealist.
And if you moderate based on what's in a sig, you don't need to have mod points to start with.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Be careful what you wish for; "regulation" isn't the answer here, it's a big part of the problem.
Because nothing ever bad came from letting banks do whatever they want.
Then Paypal should be regulated like one. I think that they're doing JYA a favor by ending their business relationship.
PayPal, being a business, also has the right to refuse any business they want.
Freezing funds gets screwy, though.
They lose a big chunk of that right when they spell out, in a TOS, what they can and cannot do. If they do outside those bounds they, just like users, are in violation of that agreement.
I for one support PayPal's decision, not because I don't like Cryptome, but because they are a private business making a decision that the feel suits them best.
It's weird that you agree with a decision by a corporation just because it is a private entity. If they decided to bring a bulldozer over to your house and demolish it would you support that because "they are a private business making a decision that the feel suits them best"?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
PayPal, being a business, also has the right to refuse any business they want.
That is true. But this is money they have already accepted from Cryptome's donors that PayPal is stealing.*
*Even if they eventually give the money back, they are stealing the use of the funds for half a year. I'd accept a different word if they pay Cryptome interest at the prime rate.
Hey, let's play a game called "make up hypothetical situations to support our arguments." In this corner they're bulldozering our house. In the opposite corner they're buying us a mansion. WHO WILL WIN!?!
Pay Pal Sucks comes up everytime there is a story about Pay Pal. Suspiciously, the "Alernatives To Paypal" section is but one vendor. In fact the "Alternatives" button leads you to the vendors website.
A list of various alternatives would be fine. But just the one, it passes discredit to the whole site. Are the stories even real?
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Frankly, most small web sales companies (talking about one person selling items via a web page) simply can not afford the fees involved in normal credit card transactions.
PayPal is inexpensive and most people never have an issue with the service.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Paypal may be able to refuse to do business with whomever they like but so do we. Every time Paypal pulls a stunt like this, we as private individuals have a right to call them on it.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Businesses have no right to break the law. PayPal thinks the laws do not apply to them.
We need to be expanding the boycott of PayPal and the boycott of businesses that use PayPal as the only means to pay. Maybe we should also go further and boycott those that merely include PayPal as one of the options.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yes, it's wrong. Fine if you don't want to do business with me, just give me my damn money! They shouldn't be allowed to freeze funds for 6 months -- that's just insane.
Is it wrong to deny you access to thousands of dollars that belong to you, hold them hostage for 6 months, and then deduct a huge fee before finally wiring it to your bank (if at all)? Definitely sounds like fraud to me.
I don't know about 180 day freezing of funds, that sounds extremely fishy to me. But the part about not doing business with potentially risky clients? Try opening a merchant account with a major bank and see that you will get rejected or have your account closed in a second if they smell something risky in your business regarding things like a slightest hint of potential copyright liability or legal adult content, or any other legal type of business that they disapprove of.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I could disagree with you at length, but I find it easier to say
FUCK YOU.
"bulldozering our house"
sometimes happens.
"buying us a mansion"
never happens.
"WHO WILL WIN!?!"
bulldozering our house.
A similar question can be asked about those people posting critical comments of paypal.
A similar question can be asked about the 98% of slashdot comments that consist of people's opinions who don't have a direct involvement with the subject. Sometimes people simply like to converse about a subject.
That is ridiculous. Destroying private property is illegal, while Refusing to service someone is not. I don't know how you got modded Insightful.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
banks were pressured by lawsuit and by certain congressmen
Nice red herring you've got there. Too bad more than half the bad loans were made by mortgage companies like ditech.com (you might also know them as "GM") who had shitloads of cash and no regulations on what to do with it.
If there was any one thing that caused the economy to implode, it was the ability to securitize those mortgages. Once that happened, all those mortgage companies and banks and rating agencies all lied about how much those mortgage-backed securities were worth, whether they came from ACORN loans or came from someone seeing a lendingtree.com ad on TV.
Needless to say, the "CRA did it ;_;" patrol has been thourougly debunked over and over, so please stop spreading lies like this.
That is ridiculous. Destroying private property is illegal, while Refusing to service someone is not. I don't know how you got modded Insightful.
For the sake of this argument, let's take the statement that Paypal froze their funds as being true (I know, this is Slashdot, where the summary is usually wrong). Refusing to give someone money that is rightfully theirs could be considered the equivalent of destroying their property. Giving them the money currently in their account and then refusing to accept any more payments is different from keeping money that was intended as a payment to them, not a payment to Paypal.
...and nothing bad ever came of allowing public and private interests merging in a joint effort against their common foe: individual liberty.
Whilst I strongly disagree with both DarkKnightRadick's stance on TFA issue and his(/her?) "reasoning" (I say that an immoral private business DOES deserve moral opposition, but NOT legal opposition, at least not beyond an individual's legal obligations), but using e-psychoanalysis is a fairly stupid thing to do. Firstly, it's an ad hominem attack; in some circles, this means you automatically lose (like Godwin). Secondly, if I (or someone else) were to e-psychoanalyse YOU, it would end up being something like
I'm not saying these things are true; what I AM saying is that e-psychoanalysis is completely useless and retarded (hence, anyone can safely disregard the above blockquote).
Refusing to give someone money that is rightfully theirs could be considered the equivalent of destroying their property.
Umm... no. (*) The equivalent of wrongfully withholding someone's property, or- at a push- stealing it? Possibly, yeah.
The equivalent of actually destroying it? Not really. Not unless they run off and spend it on hookers and blow and don't have any other cash to pay it back with, otherwise... that's a bit silly.
(*) Well, I guess one has the right to "consider [anything] the equivalent" of anything else, but then you could say that dancing a jig to the music of Milli Vanilli was the "equivalent of destroying their property". It still doesn't bear scrutiny.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I saw a rather nice quotation regarding this some time ago. To paraphrase from memory:
The financial crash shows that capitalism does work to regulate banks; if they take too much risk they eventually lose out, lose all their money and go bankrupt, exactly what is meant to happen to companies that are poorly run in a capitalist economy.
Pure capitalism works, as long as you are willing to accept that the way it regulates itself is through disaster.
Your choice.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
... didn't this just happen to Wikileaks?
Paypal may be able to refuse to do business with whomever they like but so do we. Every time Paypal pulls a stunt like this, we as private individuals have a right to call them on it.
Oh yeah, this pisses me off too. Every time something like this happens, someone will say that they're a private business that has the right to do what it likes- but usually in the context of someone having criticised that company and expressed in a way that seemingly implies that any criticism of their actions runs counter to that principle.
They're entitled to conduct their business how they wish (within reason), and they're entitled to ignore the negative opinions. But they're *not* entitled to expect protection from legitimate criticism, opinion and discussion expressed by others, nor from the effects of such criticism on them if they choose to ignore it.
Same with "you think XXXX product sucks? No-one was putting a gun to your head and making you buy it!" type posts. No- the company is free to sell a products, and people are free to buy it- and others are equally free to express their opinion and advice as they see fit. They don't like that? Tough.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Rush? Wow. This is the first time I've actually defended "the powerful". Personally I don't like PayPal. After this stunt, I will not be using them.
I do defend their right to do business with whomever they wish (and not to do business with whomever they wish). That's all my support is for. The law they used is retarded and ineffective and was just an excuse to make life harder for John. If you go to Cryptome's site, you can see he isn't crying over this and neither should we. OTOH, we should take our e-payment business elsewhere.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
And regulation never stopped them. We have plenty of regulations on banks, and take a look at their condition right now. Regulation didn't prevent the recent collapses.
And I'll bet you're going to simply suggest we haven't regulated them enough. Which is exactly how tyrants rule.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Banks in their current form only exist due to regulation, dumbass.
Your comment is not entirely accurate either. While you are correct that the government forced some banks to make bad loans, if that was the only problem, the damage would have been much smaller and the banks would have gotten dimes on the dollar for foreclosed mortgages. However, it was banks repackaging and trading in securities that lost the link between value and price that put them into trouble. It easy (at least for those who do it for a living to estimate the value of a house and compare it to its mortgage. But these securities were valued based on promises and ideals. For groups whose job it is to handle money, this was incompetence of unimaginable levels. None of the executives should have held jobs after these failures. For all their talk of bonuses for those who were skilled in their trade, these folks were not. Maybe in individuals units that were not involved could have been spared, but the senior executives should all have been gone. Plus any bank that writes an executive a golden parachute without at least having a method to recoup following major blunders should be allowed to fail. If the free market system had been allowed to work, we should have had many Wall Street executives in jail for Madoff-level pyramid schemes. For that's what this really was. IF you want free market to work, then we need to allow pitchforks and torches system to work as well. Besides, it will probably be a junior executive selling the pitchforks and torches outside the senior executive's home.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
Houses, or at least the land they are built on, do increase in value. its a known fact.
As the population grows, the need for houses also grows.
Supply and demand.
Same supply with increased demands means higher prices.
Now although more houses get built to help keep demand in place. These new houses are normally built and developed in new suburbs with minimal cost/infrastructure/community.
Their desirability isn't as high as in an established zone
Properity, both the land and the house its built on (assuming maintance) increase in value as time goes on.
So much so that most goverments have a special tax in place to tax the increase in value from people who buy and sell property.
Here in New Zealand we don't have such a tax and its a concern, due to the fact that a lot of investment capital goes into property investment.
Going slightly off-topic, ubt its worth mentioniong
The problem with property investment is that investing in land does nothing inherntly useful. No new jobs are created, yet a huge amount of money is "invested" in something that generates nothing. The value such an investment "generates" is caused by the action of others who have invested into businesses that actually generate wealth.
As such most goverments have a tax systems in place to encourage development away from such dead-end investments
Anyway, since an artical this long demands a citation, heres wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_tax
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.